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rudetude

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 16, 2009
19
0
i went into the at&t store today to look at iphones and i told the lady who helped me that i had heard of people using their iphones with monthly gophone plans. she said that it would not work because it is always connected to the internet and you would constantly pay for internet usage. that doesn't make any sense to me if i am connected to other wireless networks that are not the at&t network. i feel like she was just feeding me some ******** so i would sign a 2 year contract. if anyone is using there iphone with the gophone monthly plans right now help!
 
What she said was true. The iPhone has a tendency to hop onto a data connection for no discernable reason. The nice thing is that GoPhone used to have an unlimited data option, which let a lot of people use their iPhones without worrying about racking up data charges. But the unlimited data option is no longer there.
 
so there is pretty much no way to have the iphone for less than the set iphone plans
 
so there is pretty much no way to have the iphone for less than the set iphone plans

Not true at all.

First, the lady at the AT&T store was wrong. You can disable data usage when you'd like, but even if you don't the "background usage" will be virtually non-existent if you disable automatic e-mail fetch / push.

Secondly, although AT&T no longer offer unlimited data add-ons for GoPhone accounts they do have a 100MB data bundle. It doesn't sound like much, but if all you do is e-mail, some browsing and a bit of IMing you'll be fine. I used that add-on when I was back in the US for two weeks last month and even with some pretty heavy usage I still had used < 30MB of data.
 
Not true at all.

First, the lady at the AT&T store was wrong. You can disable data usage when you'd like, but even if you don't the "background usage" will be virtually non-existent if you disable automatic e-mail fetch / push.

Secondly, although AT&T no longer offer unlimited data add-ons for GoPhone accounts they do have a 100MB data bundle. It doesn't sound like much, but if all you do is e-mail, some browsing and a bit of IMing you'll be fine. I used that add-on when I was back in the US for two weeks last month and even with some pretty heavy usage I still had used < 30MB of data.

Yeah they charge $20 for 100mb of data. Why would anyone want to pay that.
 
Not true at all.

First, the lady at the AT&T store was wrong. You can disable data usage when you'd like, but even if you don't the "background usage" will be virtually non-existent if you disable automatic e-mail fetch / push.

Secondly, although AT&T no longer offer unlimited data add-ons for GoPhone accounts they do have a 100MB data bundle. It doesn't sound like much, but if all you do is e-mail, some browsing and a bit of IMing you'll be fine. I used that add-on when I was back in the US for two weeks last month and even with some pretty heavy usage I still had used < 30MB of data.

so if i dont want to add on any data plans and just use wi-fi i can disable data usage and i wont get charged for data usage? does using e-mail fetch/push only use at&t internet service? also if i am in a wi-fi area and i use that wi-fi does that still use data from a data plan if i have one?
 
True but that mean no youtube, no web browsing, limited email, no streaming, no use of apps like google maps, weather, etc. and for $20 a month.

No it doesn't.

Yes, YouTube is a bad call, but it's nowhere near as limiting as you claim.

I send/receive close to a thousand e-mails a week, browse nearly every day and check the weather and stocks, and use Google Maps on a regular basis and I almost never come close to 100MB. Short of downloading from iTunes or watching YouTube you're not likely to hit that cap in normal usage.

so if i dont want to add on any data plans and just use wi-fi i can disable data usage and i wont get charged for data usage? does using e-mail fetch/push only use at&t internet service? also if i am in a wi-fi area and i use that wi-fi does that still use data from a data plan if i have one?

WiFi != EDGE. You can use WiFi without any sort of anything from AT&T. It is completely separate. Dig?
 
No it doesn't.

Yes, YouTube is a bad call, but it's nowhere near as limiting as you claim.

I send/receive close to a thousand e-mails a week, browse nearly every day and check the weather and stocks, and use Google Maps on a regular basis and I almost never come close to 100MB. Short of downloading from iTunes or watching YouTube you're not likely to hit that cap in normal usage.



WiFi != EDGE. You can use WiFi without any sort of anything from AT&T. It is completely separate. Dig?

Maybe true, but paying $20 for 100mb is rape by ATT.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

ATT won't sell you an iPhone for $199 on a gophone plan.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

ATT won't sell you an iPhone for $199 on a gophone plan.

Correct.

But there's tons of used iPhones available for sale from various sources.

You can also buy relatively cheap GoPhone accounts that, as an added bonus, might also come with a crappy phone you can resell to somebody else.

If you take an active GoPhone account, and you put it together with a hacktivated used iPhone, the net result is a contractually unencumbered iPhone running on a GoPhone account. Then you can jailbreak the iPhone to disable data access, or else go for one of the limited data add-on options if you think it'll meet your needs.
 
Maybe true, but paying $20 for 100mb is rape by ATT.

Depends on how much use you get out of it. Given that I use push e-mail extensively, I'm willing to pay $20/month for that privilege when I'm in the US. If I didn't use my phone for business e-mail or if my data usage only consisted of YouTube et. al. I might feel otherwise, but as it is I certainly get $20-worth of use out of it.
 
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